7 entries categorized "Ingredients: sweet or Italian vermouth"

November 18, 2012

This rich burgundy-colored cocktail, in its royal form, is ideal for holiday parties. You can make it in batch in advance, then simply serve from the chilled bottles, garnish, and brighten with a pour of champagne on top.

Chill and serve to a few friends, garnishing with an orange twist.With a champagne float, it's a Sweet King William, and delicious.

*If using another, sweeter brand, use less of the two liqueurs.** If you don't have this, do not buy a bottle—you will never ever use it up—just put in a little more Cherry Heering.

Remember: if making it for a party and then chilling the bottles (rather
than stirring with ice and adding dilution that way as you would when mixing on demand), add water
before bottling; 3 parts ingredients to 1 part water. Yep, good cocktails really are 25% dilution.

June 11, 2009

Our
strategic approach in this guide is laid out in a series of steps,
let’s call them adventures, which build upon each other and which space
out the expense of building your collection of tools, ingredients, and
resources. The speed with which you take on these adventures is up to
your budget and time, but our goal is for each one to provide an
immediate reward and a new array of possibilities.

Through these
adventures you will be introduced to the core set of classic cocktails
and techniques. Many of the tools, ingredients and other resources
described are available through our shopping links.

Shopping:

Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth (~$8)

Luxardo Gourmet Maraschino Cherries (~$17, this may sound like a lot to pay for cherries but they are truly astonishingly good and there are a whole lot of them jammed into this jar; it’s worth every penny)

A really good garnish knife (if you don’t already have a paring knife you love & can use very safely) Consider a Santoku style which is large enough to discourage you from dangerously cutting fruit in your hand and which has an edge design that makes it easier to start a cut on a firm curved surface like a lime.

A couple very fresh oranges with a nice strong orange scent on the skin (indicating plenty of orange oils).

Preparation:

Find a safe small candle holder such as might be used in a bar or restaurant.

Get some toothpicks.

Light the candle & place it on your bar surface but a little bit out of your way, resting on a saucer with a bit of water in it.

Making the drink:

Wash your hands.

Rinse the lemon and the orange.

Chill three glasses if you don’t have them already cold in the freezer.

Shake a dash (a “dash” means its okay if it’s several drops) of orange bitters into the mixing container. Do this twice more because you’re making three servings.

Measure & add 1 oz x 3 = 3 oz rye.

Stir with ice (remember to add more ice because your liquid level is higher in the mixing container).

Strain evenly into the 3 chilled glasses. (Try to pour an ounce into each and then even them up in small pours as you dispense the rest of the liquid. Notice how the melt from the ice has increased the fluid beyond the added ingredients.)

Move a glass somewhat away from the others so that the lemon oil doesn’t spray across them & add a small lemon twist.

Move the second glass near the first and use your barspoon to gently drop one cherry from the jar into it.

Take the orange and, holding on the cutting mat end up, use the garnish knife to slice off a stripe of the outer skin, about 1” wide and 2” long, trying not to squeeze it as you handle it.

Light a toothpick in the candle (we recommend using toothpicks rather than matches in order to avoid the sulfur smell) and, holding the flame about 3” above & away from the drink, pick up the orange peel strip delicately (like an eggshell, as Dale DeGroff says) by the edges, angle it towards the drink about an inch further away from the drink than the flame and squeeze. The orange oils should be expressed, passing through the flame & igniting before falling onto the drink. Drop the toothpick in the water in the saucer and throw away the peel.

Compare your drinks. We’d recommend the lemon twist version first, since you have had a rye drink with that garnish before (the Old Fashioned). Next the orange version, since it’s going to be closer in flavor to the lemon version. Lastly try the one with the cherry. Notice the impact of the different garnishes. Which works best for you with this rye, this vermouth, and these proportions?

Progress report:

You can make multiples of a drink at once. You have a new garnishing technique. Since you have oranges, you can try making orange twists with your channel knife and orange zests. With those and the cherries, your world of garnishes continues to expand. You now also have a new kind of vermouth. Compare half an ounce of each served in room temperature glasses (so you can really taste the differences). You’re learning to analyze your ingredients and to see where particular ones perform well or poorly in a given recipe.

Where you can go from here with these skills:Try the three Manhattans again sometime using Angostura aromatic bitters instead of orange bitters.

Revisit the Martini concept using gin and sweet vermouth. 2:1 with Angostura bitters and a lemon twist is an Artillery or with an orange peel instead of the lemon it’s a Sunshine. 3:1 with no bitters and a lemon twist is a Blackstone. 2:1 with orange bitters is a Rex Cocktail. 1:1 with both aromatic and orange bitters is a Hearst Cocktail. 2:1 with Peychaud’s bitters (which you’d have to go buy since we didn’t already send you shopping for them) is a Hilliard Cocktail. 2:1:1 bringing in sweet AND dry vermouth with aromatic bitters is a Farmer’s Cocktail or with orange peel it becomes a Kup’s Indispensable or at 8:1:1 with the lemon twist again it’s a Perfect. 3:1:1 with 2 dashes of orange bitters and an orange peel is an R.C.A. Special Cocktail. 3:1:1 with a dash each of aromatic and orange bitters is a Wild Rose Cocktail.

As you can see gin + vermouth(s) + maybe some bitters + citrus peel garnish of some sort is the foundation of a panoply of cocktails (indeed, much of the Savoy Cocktail Book).

For vermouth variations using rye whiskey, try a Dry Manhattan, Perfect Manhattan, or a Jumbo.

You can also try some other recipes using these other new ingredients, with specific recommendations where we have them noted:Honolulu or Rosemary or Brown University (buy some bourbon, say Four Roses (~$22) or Buffalo Trace or Bulleit (both ~$23))One Of Mine Cocktail (squeeze some juice from one of those partially skinned oranges)Smiler (also using some orange juice)Martinez (buy Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur(~$28))Move Over Cocktail (buy Cherry Heering (~$24))Rob Roy (buy Dewar’s blended scotch, either White Label or 12 year & check the prices since the bottle twice the size might be only 25% more expensive (~$21-28))Black Manhattan (buy Averna (~$29))

February 01, 2009

"Into a mixing-glass place a lump of ice, a dash of Orange bitters and a
dash of cherry cordial. Add half a jigger of Sloe gin and half a jigger
of Italian vermouth; stir until cold, twist in the oil from a piece of
lemon peel, strain into a cocktail-glass and serve."

April 20, 2008

Perhaps due to the change in Amer Picon's recipe in the 1970's rendering it lower proof we don't really know what this drink is supposed to taste like, however, if you can get your hands on a bottle of the stuff currently available in Europe (e.g through Gerry's of Soho, London) you will not find yourself disappointed. If this is a shadow it's former self, it's still a darn tasty shadow.

April 19, 2008

Crisp, bittersweet, refreshing. Remarkably, also a simple recipe and therefore possible to walk most any bartender through making this apertif.

1 part gin1 part sweet vermouth1 part Campari

It's just that simple, but sometimes it takes a firm hand to keep them on track with those equal proportions.

The bibulo.us authors particularly recommend Martin Millers gin and Carpano Antica Formula vermouth for this libation, particularly if you can get Bradley Avey of Bix in San Francisco to mix it.

Recipes:

According to the Negroni's Wikipedia entry, though it is said to have been invented around 1919, the Negroni does not appear in English cocktail books until 1947, but it neglects to mention which book(s) it then shows up in.

According to Paul Harrington in his 1998 book Cocktail: The Drinks Bible for the 21st Century, the name Negroni was given in the 1950s by the Campari company to what had previously been referred to as the Camparinete cocktail and which consisted of

1 oz gin1 oz Campari1 oz sweet vermouth

Harrington advocates for an orange slice garnish rather than a lemon twist, to offset the bitterness of the Campari.

David Wondrich's 2002 Esquire Drinks generally agrees with Harrington's assessment, but takes the interesting variant of calling for half-again as much gin (1.5 oz) and an orange peel garnish. Dale DeGroff's The Craft of the Cocktail, from the same year, agrees with Harrington but flames the orange.

In 2006's The Art of the Bar by Hollinger & Schwartz, the recipe is quite changed:

April 13, 2008

The Manhattan is one of the archetypal classic cocktails and it is here we begin the bibulo.us journey.

It is basically some whiskey, usually less sweet vermouth, plus a dash of some kind of bitters. Traditionally it is made with rye, the spiciness of which plays nicely with the flavors of the vermouth. It originated in New York, probably in the 1870s, but beyond that there is disagreement over its precise origin.

The personal experience of the bibulo.us authors is to recommend Carpano Antica Formula as the vermouth most suited to the drink.

Who is bibulo.us?

Bibulo.us is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. In other words, a good way for authors to make just a bit more per copy on their books or products they recommend.

Sometimes people give us stuff to review. If we got something for free, we'll say so. But that won't affect the content of the review. If we say we like it, we actually like it. We sometimes get comped drinks at bars, too -- but so do you, probably, so we don't specifically call that out.